Road trip Gone Wrong

Jake Buckley

Road Trip Gone Wrong

    “Is everything packed up?”

    “Yeah we are good to go!”, I said as I slammed the trunk to my best friend’s white SUV. We were about to embark on a cross country road trip from Los Angeles, California to Miami, Florida. One of our best friends from high school was getting married, and thanks to Adam’s extreme fear of flying, an airplane was not an option for us. At first, I was very reluctant to agree to accompany him on this journey, a forty hour drive seemed a bit excessive for what could have been a five hour plane ride. Nonetheless, I did not want him to have to take that long of a trip all alone, so I agreed to tag along. 

    The wedding was in five days, so as long as we drove at least ten hours a day, we would have plenty of time to make it to the wedding a day early, and still have some time to explore Miami. Or so we hoped. 

    Adam, who decided to take the first driving shift, started the car and we began moving. I plugged my phone into the aux cord so I could start playing the road trip playlist I had taken so long to make, but a mile into our journey, something went wrong. 

    “Uhhh we have a problem,” said Adam as the car slowed to a stop in the middle of the road. 

    “Great. What happened? Did you remember to fill up on gas?” I replied. 

    “Oh, that is what I forgot! Well, looks like we might get a bit of a late start. Hang tight while I walk down the road to that gas station,” he said while pointing to a Chevron a few blocks ahead. Well this is off to a great start, I thought to myself. 

    About ten minutes later I saw Adam approach the car. He was holding a gallon of gas, and, of course, a corn dog from the gas station. He gave me a thumbs up as he passed my window and started to pump the gas into the car. 

    “Okay, now it looks like we are good to go!” Adam said when he got back in the car. 

    “Good, we did not lose too much time, but let’s get back on the road!” I said, hoping this would be the last problem we would run into during the trip. 

    After what felt like hours of driving we made it into Arizona and it was already dark outside. We both decided to get dinner at a Taco Bell right off the freeway, and regretted it as soon as we ate it. But we did not let that slow us down, we had a hotel about two hours away that we needed to get you to stay in for the night. As we made our way back towards the freeway, I felt myself begin to doze off and decided to recline my chair to finally relax a bit. However, that didn’t last long, because before I knew it I felt the card jerk to the left and heard a huge honk come from outside.

    “What happened?!” I exclaimed as I was jolted awake. 

    “Woah my bad! I don’t know what I did, I was just getting onto the freeway and this car came out of nowhere!” said Adam with a terrified tone to his voice. I started to sit back up to see what was going on, and I realized something strange. 

    “Um Adam…” I said as I noticed five lanes of headlights coming straight towards us. “Adam what are you doing! You are on the wrong side of the freeway!” I yelled. 

    “What do you mean?” he said, confused. Then, he started to squint his eyes and as soon as I saw them widen, I knew he realized what he had done. He quickly pulled over to the side and put the car in park as he caught his breath. Tons of oncoming cars were honking and moving over to the leftmost lane to get as far away as they could from us. 

    “Can you not see? What is wrong with you? How did that happen?” I said persistently. 

    “Well, I have a hard time seeing at night, I am supposed to be wearing special glasses to help me, but I forgot them back at home. I’m not sure if we should keep going tonight,” he said, sounding defeated and worried.

    “Well if you can’t see, then I am definitely not letting you drive! Maybe we should just cancel our reservation at the other hotel and find somewhere here to stay for the night. As long as we get back on the road bright and early tomorrow morning, we shouldn’t be too far off schedule,” I explained. 

    “Yeah, you are right. Let’s do it,” Adam replied. 

    After finding our way off the freeway, we found the closest motel we could. It was far from five stars, looked like it was built in the 1800s, and had some pretty intimidating people hanging around outside, but we decided this was our only option so we booked a room for the night. After a long day of driving, we both fell asleep without any problems. 

    The next morning, I awoke to Adam aggressively shaking my shoulder, saying, “Dude! Wake up! Something happened!”

    “What now?” I said, preparing myself for the worst. 

    “My car is gone! I parked it in the parking lot last night when we got here, and it’s just not here! Someone stole it! I talked to the guy at the front desk and he was no help at all. He said that people’s cars get stolen from the parking lot all the time and that it’s not his problem! Can you believe that? What kind of place is this? I got so angry that I started to yell at him and he kicked me out! Said we got to be out of here in half an hour,” Adam said, obviously flustered. 

    “How are we supposed to get out of here if we have nowhere to go? We are in the middle of nowhere and we are stranded!” I exclaimed.

    Eventually, we got our stuff and got out. We tried calling an Uber, to see if we could at least get to a nearby town, but the nearest Uber was about three hours away. We decided our best bet was to walk towards the freeway and hope someone is nice enough to give us a ride. It was far from ideal, but so was this whole trip. 

    We approached the freeway and started walking along with our thumbs high in the sky, hoping to attract someone who would drive us. When we were about to give up, someone pulled over and stopped behind us. I turned around to see a black Toyota and a tall man get out of the driver’s seat. I put up my hand to block the sun from my eyes, and could not believe what I was seeing. It was Tony! The guy who’s wedding we were going to was right in front of us!

    “Tony?!” Adam and I exclaimed in unison. 

    “What are you guys doing?! You really thought you could make it to my wedding in time by foot?” he joked. “Come on, get in!” he said. 

    Adam and I sighed in relief, and ran to the car. We explained everything and had a good laugh about the situation. Finally, we were on our way to Miami and nothing could stop us.